History of the Telephone: Service Lines and Switchboards This model of Bell's first telephone (right) is a duplicate of the instrument through which speech sounds were first transmitted electrically (1875). Alexander Graham Bell Updated September 08, 2016. In the 1870s, two inventors, Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell, both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically (the telephone). Both men rushed their respective designs to the patent office within hours of each other. Bell patented his telephone first. Gray and Bell entered into a famous legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which Bell won. Evolution of the Telegraph into the Telephone The telegraph and telephone are both wire-based electrical systems, and Alexander Graham Bell's success with the telephone came as a direct result of his attempts to improve the telegraph. When Bell began experimenting with electrical signals, the telegraph had been an established means of communication for some 30 years. continue reading below our video Profile of Alexander Graham Bell Although a highly successful system, the telegraph, with its dot-and-dash Morse code, was basically limited to receiving and sending one message at a time.

Bell's extensive knowledge of the nature of sound and his understanding of music enabled him to conjecture the possibility of transmitting multiple messages over the same wire at the same time. Although the idea of a multiple telegraph had been in existence for some time, Bell offered his own musical or harmonic approach as a possible practical solution. His "harmonic telegraph" was based on the principle that several notes could be sent simultaneously along the same wire if the notes or signals differed in pitch. Talk with Electricity By October 1874, Bell's research had progressed to the extent that he could inform his future father-in-law, Boston attorney Gardiner Greene Hubbard, about the possibility of a multiple telegraph. Hubbard, who resented the absolute control then exerted by the Western Union Telegraph Company, instantly saw the potential for breaking such a monopoly and gave Bell the financial backing he needed. Bell proceeded with his work on the multiple telegraph, but he did not tell Hubbard that he and Thomas Watson, a young electrician whose services he had enlisted, were also exploring an idea that had occurred to him that summer - that of developing a device that would transmit speech electrically.

While Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson worked on the harmonic telegraph at the insistent urging of Hubbard and other backers, Bell nonetheless met in March 1875 with Joseph Henry , the respected director of the Smithsonian Institution, who listened to Bell's ideas for a telephone and offered encouraging words. Spurred on by Henry's positive opinion, Bell and Watson continued their work. By June 1875 the goal of creating a device that would transmit speech electrically was about to be realized. They had proven that different tones would vary the strength of an electric current in a wire. To achieve success, they, therefore, needed only to build a working transmitter with a membrane capable of varying electronic currents and a receiver that would reproduce these variations in audible frequencies. First Sounds - Twang On June 2, 1875, Bell while experimenting with his technique called "harmonic telegraph" discovered he could hear sound over a wire. The sound was that of a twanging clock spring. Bell's greatest success was achieved on March 10, 1876, which marked not only the birth of the telephone but the death of the multiple telegraph as well.

The communications potential contained in his demonstration of being able to "talk with electricity" far outweighed anything that simply increasing the capability of a dot-and-dash system could imply. First Voice - Mr. Watson ... Bell's notebook entry of March 10, 1876, describes his successful experiment with the telephone. Speaking through the instrument to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room, Bell utters these famous first words, "Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you." Alexander Graham Bell - Brief Biography Born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Alexander Graham Bell was the son and grandson of authorities in elocution and the correction of speech. Educated to pursue a career in the same specialty, his knowledge of the nature of sound led him not only to teach the deaf, but also to invent the telephone. More on the Life of Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell - Biography Other Inventions Bell's unceasing scientific curiosity led to the invention of the photophone , to significant commercial improvements in Thomas Edison's phonograph, and to development of his own flying machine just six years after the Wright Brothers launched their plane at Kitty Hawk.

As President James Garfield lay dying of an assassin's bullet in 1881, Bell hurriedly invented a metal detector in an unsuccessful attempt to locate the fatal slug. Alexander Graham Bell - Inventions - HISTORY.com Alexander Graham Bell A+E Networks Introduction Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), the Scottish-born American scientist best known as the inventor of the telephone, worked at a school for the deaf while attempting to invent a machine that would transmit sound by electricity. Bell was granted the first official patent for his telephone in March 1876, though he would later face years of legal challenges to his claim that he was its sole inventor, resulting in one of history’s longest patent battles. Bell continued his scientific work for the rest of his life, and used his success and wealth to establish various research centers nationwde. Google Bell owes his immortality to his having been the first to design and patent a practical device for transmitting the human voice by means of an electric current. But Bell always described himself simply as a “teacher of the deaf,” and his contributions in that field were of the first order. Did You Know?

Though he is credited with its invention, Alexander Graham Bell refused to have a telephone in his study, fearing it would distract him from his scientific work. Bell, who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, was educated there and at the University of London. He also studied under his grandfather, Alexander Bell, a noted speech teacher. He taught elocution, assisted his father, also a speech teacher and noted phonetician, and taught at a school for the deaf in England, using his father’s methods. In 1870, Bell immigrated with his parents to Canada. Two years later he established a school for the deaf in Boston, Massachusetts , and the following year became a professor in speech and vocal physiology at Boston University. While teaching he experimented with a means of transmitting several telegraph messages simultaneously over a single wire and also with various devices to help the deaf learn to speak, including a means of graphically recording sound waves. In 1874 the essential idea of the telephone formed in his mind.

As he later explained it, “If I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity precisely as the air varies in density during the production of sound, I should be able to transmit speech telegraphically.” Two years later he applied for a patent, which was granted on March 7, 1876. On March 10, the first coherent complete sentence—the famous “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you”—was transmitted in his laboratory. In later years Bell experimented with a means to detect metal in wounds and with a vacuum-jacket respirator that led to the development of the iron lung. He helped bring Thomas A. Edison’s phonograph to commercial practicality and experimented with hydrofoil boats and with airplanes as early as the 1890s. With the wealth derived from the telephone, Bell was able to assist the careers of other scientists. He also founded and helped finance the journal Science, today the premier American scientific journal, and the National Geographic Society. While constantly engaged in scientific experiments, Bell crusaded tirelessly on behalf of the deaf, encouraging their integration into society with the help of lip-reading and other techniques. In 1890 he founded the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf.

He died in 1922 at his summer home on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. People throughout North America were urged to refrain from making phone calls during his burial so that telephones would remain silent as a tribute. Robert V. Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (1973). John Steele Gordon The Reader’s Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Tags Who invented the telephone? Who invented the telephone? Honoring the real inventor of the phone © Zak Keith, 2009 If you answered “Alexander Graham Bell,” then you, along with millions of people around the world have been misinformed. In 2001, the US Congress finally succumbed to the nagging truth and “changed its mind” on the issue, according credit to the real inventor and declaring that the original telephone was in fact invented by Antonio Meucci , a penniless Italian who did not speak a word of English and could not afford to patent his discovery. As to Alexander Graham Bell?

Well, he was just a successful patent applicant and, some would say, thief. According to the US Congress, Bell was a cunning opportunist who took all the credit for a more brilliant scientist’s work. The House of Representatives voted to recognise mechanical genius, Antonio Meucci, as the father of modern communications, following a protracted battle by historians and Italian Americans. The real inventor of the telephone, Meucci (1808—1989), had been working in Cuba in the 1830s, developing methods for treating illnesses using electric shocks, when he discovered the ability of sound to travel through electrical impulses. He later moved to Staten Island to follow up on his discovery. In 1860—16 years before Bell claimed to have invented the telephone—Meucci demonstrated his teletrofono in New York, but could not afford the $250 required to register a patent. Bell, who took an interest in Meucci’s invention, convinced him to share his research material. They shared a lab together and Bell had full access to Meucci’s materials. Bell made good and clever use of Meucci before coming up with his own “invention” and applying for a patent in his own name.

Meucci duly protested, but lacking connections, was unable to convince anyone that Alexander Graham Bell had stolen his ideas. Under general patent laws, then and today, Bell should have credited Meucci and agreed to share royalties with him. Beset with debt, Meucci could not afford the $10 fee for maintaining the patent caveat and temporarily gave up pursuit of Bell in 1874. Two years later, Bell, uncontested by Meucci, was granted ownership of the patent. Interestingly, another contender, Elisha Gray, had also submitted a patent for the telephone some hours before Bell, but due to a technicality, Bell was the registrant whose application won. Meucci finally decided to sue Bell, charging him with fraud in the Supreme Court. The case looked rather promising for Meucci, but unfortunately, before any proceedings could begin, Meucci died on October 18, 1889.

In 2001, the United States Congress took the extraordinary decision of doing justice to Meucci, passing a resolution officially according recognition to Meucci as the real inventor of the telephone, stating that “if Meucci had been able to pay the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell .” The US Congress further stated that given all the facts of the patent disputes between Gray and Bell, under no terms should Alexander Graham Bell have been awarded the patent for the telephone by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 1876. Alexander Graham Bell was posthumously stripped of his dubious honor as the inventor of the telephone. “Justice” was finally served... Well, sort of... In effect, the Congressional resolution served only as a declaration and did not technically annul or modify the patent received by Bell in 1876. The resolution was also subsequently followed by another legislative declaration upholding Bell’s priority and his status as the inventor (patent holder) of the telephone. Credit where credit is due: Both Antonio Meucci and Elisha Gray should be credited with successfully inventing telephones in the United States before Alexander Graham Bell “invented” it in 1876.

Others who performed pioneering experimental work with electrical voice transmissions over wires included Thomas Edison, Innocenzo Manzetti, Charles Bourseul and Johann Philipp Reis. The telephone, as we know it today, is largely based on improvements made by Thomas Edison on the original design—which was not Bell’s but Meucci’s. Alexander Graham Bell: Inventor of the Telephone Home | Great Inventors | Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell Inventor of the Telephone Though he was born in Scotland and spent some time in Ontario, Alexander Graham Bell didn't actually start inventing until he settled in Boston and became an American citizen. And it's a good thing he did, because without Graham Bell we wouldn't have one of our most valued inventions: the telephone. With both a mother and a wife who were unable to hear, inventor Alexander Graham Bell took an active interest in the deaf. Like his father, he taught deaf people and worked as a speech therapist. In fact, he first developed his phonautograph invention, a device that draws vibrations from the human voice, to help deaf students visualize sound. Eventually, this invention would evolve into what we now know as the telephone.

Alexander Graham Bell made the first speech transmission through his telephone invention on March 10, 1876 (three days after he received his patent), and soon after introduced the device at the World's fair. Of course, Graham Bell wasn't the only one working to develop this technology at the time – one of the others was telegraphy titan Western Union. All in all, the Bell Company was forced to defend over 600 legal challenges to the invention's patent. And, with Alexander Graham Bell's convincing testimony, the company won each and every one. For more information on Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone, please visit: Telephone History - Invention of the Telephone telephone on March 10, 1876 Definition: noun / telï¿½eï¿½phone Function: An instrument which converts sound, specifically the human voice, to electrical impulses of various frequencies and then back to a tone that sounds like the original voice.

t Patent(s): 174,465 (US) issued March 7, 1876 filed February 14, 1876 161,739 (US) issued April 6, 1875 filed March 6, 1875 Inventor: Alexander Graham Bell Criteria; First practical. Modern prototype. Entrepreneur. Birth: March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland Death: August 2, 1922, at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada Nationality: American Milestones: 1831 Michael Faraday proved that vibrations of metal could be converted to electrical impulses 1861 Johann Philip Reis built a apparatus that changed sound to electricity and back again to sound 1871 Antonio Meucci filed his patent caveat (notice of intention to take out a patent) 1874 A. G.

Bell while working on a multiple telegraph, developed the basic ideas for the telephon 1875 Bell files first patent for improved telegraphy 1876 Bell and Watson transmit the first complete sentence 1876 Bell files patent application on February 14,. patent issues March 7 1876 filed his patent caveat (notice of intention to take out a patent) on February 14, 1877 first automatic telephone exchange was patented by Almon Strowger of Kansas City 1921 The Detroit Police Department, began experimentation with one-way vehicular mobile service. 1928 Detroit Police commenced regular one-way radio communication with all its patrol cars. 1933 Bayonne, NJ Police Department initiated regular two-way communications with its patrol cars 1936 Alton Dickieson, H.I. Romnes and D. Mitchell begin design of AT&T's mobile phone system 1940 Connecticut State Police began statewide two-way, on the frequency modulated (FM) 1941 FM mobile radio became standard throughout the country following the success in Connecticut 1946 A driver in St.

Louis, Mo., placed a phone call,it was the first AT&T mobile telephone call. 1948 wireless telephone service was available in almost 100 cities and highway corridors. 1947 cellular telephone service conceived by D.H. Ring at Bell Labs, but the technology didn't exist 1962 The first commercial touch-tone phones were a big hit in their preview at Seattle World's Fair. 1970 commercial Picture phone service debuted in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 1971 Richard Frenkiel and Joel Engel of AT&T applied computers and electronics to make it work. 1973 Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first cellphone call to his rival Joe Engel of AT&T Bell Labs 1978 AT&T conducted FCC-authorized field trials in Chicago and Newark, N.J. 1979 the first cellular network was launched in Japan.

1982 FCC granted commercial licenses to an AT&T subsidiary, Advanced Mobile Phone Service 1983 AMPS was then divided among the local companies as part of the planning for divestiture 1983 Illinois Bell opened the first commercial cellular system in October phone, telephone, bell, alexander graham bell, alex bell, bell telephone company, at&t, bell labs, western electric, Antonio Meucci, Philip Reis, Elisha Gray, invention, history, inventor of, history of, who invented, invention of, fascinating facts. The Story: Probably no means of communication has revolutionized the daily lives of ordinary people more than the telephone. Simply described, it is a system which converts sound, specifically the human voice, to electrical impulses of various frequencies and then back to a tone that sounds like the original voice. In 1831, Englishman Michael Faraday (1791-1867) proved that vibrations of metal could be converted to electrical impulses. This was the technological basis of the telephone, but no one actually used this system to transmit sound until 1861.

In that year, Johann Philip Reis (1834-1874) in Germany is said to have built a simple apparatus that changed sound to electricity and back again to sound. A crude device, it was incapable of transmitting most frequencies, and it was never fully developed. A practical telephone was actually invented independently by two men working in the United States, Elisha Gray and Scottish-born Alexander Graham Bell. Incredibly, both men filed for a patent on their designs at the New York patent office on February 14, 1876, with Bell beating Gray by only two hours! Although Gray had built the first steel diaphragm / electromagnet receiver in 1874, he wasnt able to master the design of a workable transmitter until after Bell had. Bell had worked tirelessly, experimenting with various types of mechanisms, while Gray had become discouraged. According to the famous story, the first fully intelligible telephone call occurred on March 6, 1876, when Bell, in one room, called to his assistant in another room.

"Come here, Watson, I want you." Watson heard the request through a receiver connected to the transmitter that Bell had designed, and what followed after that is a history of the founding of the Bell Telephone Company (later AT&T), which grew to be the largest telephone company in the world. The first telephone system, known as an exchange, which is a practical means of communicating between many people who have telephones, was installed in Hartford, Connecticut in 1877, and the first exchange linking two major cities was established between New York and Boston in 1883. The first exchange outside the United States was built in London in 1879. The exchange involved a group of operators working at a large switchboard. The operators would answer an incoming telephone call and connect it manually to the party being called. The first automatic telephone exchange was patented by Almon Strowger of Kansas City in 1891 and installed in 1892, but manual switchboards remained in common use until the middle of the twentieth century. The coin operated pay telephone was patented by William Gray of Hartford in 1889. The first rotary dial telephone was developed in 1923 by Antoine Barnay in France.

The mobile telephone was invented by Bell Telephone Company and introduced into New York City police cars in 1924. Although the first commercial mobile telephone service became available in St. Louis, Missouri in 1946, the mobile telephone would not become common for another four decades. The first touch-tone system - which used tones in the voice frequency range rather than pulses generated by rotary dials - was installed in Baltimore, MD, in 1941. Operators in a central switching office pushed the buttons; it was much too expensive for general use. However, the Bell System was intrigued by touch-tone because it increased the speed of dialing. By the early 1960s, low-cost transistors and associated circuit components made the introduction of touch-tone into home telephones possible. Extensive human factors tests determined the position of the buttons to limit errors and increase dialing speed even further. The first commercial touch-tone phones were a big hit in their preview at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. The first Picturephone test system, built in 1956, was crudeit transmitted an image only once every two seconds.

But by 1964 a complete experimental system, the "Mod 1," had been developed. To test it, the public was invited to place calls between special exhibits at Disneyland and the New York Worlds Fair. In both locations, visitors were carefully interviewed afterward by a market research agency. People, it turned out, didnt like Picturephone. The equipment was too bulky, the controls too unfriendly, and the picture too small. But the Bell System was convinced that Picturephone was viable. Trials went on for six more years. In 1970, commercial Picturephone service debuted in downtown Pittsburgh and AT&T executives confidently predicted that a million Picturephone sets would be in use by 1980. What happened? Despite its improvements, Picturephone was still big, expensive, and uncomfortably intrusive. It was only two decades later, with improvements in speed, resolution, miniaturization, and the incorporation of Picturephone into another piece of desktop equipment, the computer, that the promise of a personal video communication system was realized. In 1978, American Telephone and Telegraphs (AT&T) Bell Laboratories began testing a mobile telephone system based on hexagonal geographical regions called cells.

As the callers vehicle passed from one cell to another, an automatic switching system would transfer the telephone call to another cell without interruption. The cellular telephone system began nationwide usage in the United States in 1983. The actual history of the telephone is a subject of complex dispute. The controversy began with the success of the invention and continues today. Some of the inventors credited with inventing the telephone include Antonio Meucci, Philip Reis, Elisha Gray Who really invented the telephone? HOME > Historical Information > Who Really Invented the Telephone? Who Really Invented the Telephone? Well, that may depend on your ethnic heritage or the country you live in to some degree. Because it is possible for more than one person to come up with the same idea in roughly the same moment in time, there could have been more than one inventor of the telephone. Although Alexander Graham Bell is considered the inventor of the telephone in the USA, Canada, and Scotland, other countries that had no historical affiliation with him tend to look for possible inventors of their own ethnic background or their own country as THE inventor of the telephone.

Several web sites address this never-ending debate and it is doubtful that there is any way of proving who really came up with the idea and put it into practice first. Even here in the USA, many court battles were fought between Bell and several challengers to his right to be called the inventor of the telephone. At the end of this page are some links to external web sites that discuss some of these other contenders. But first, read the following section from a book titled " The History of the Telephone " BY HERBERT N. CASSON - First edition - A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago - Published: 1910. The following paragraphs from the book give an account of some of the court battles that Bell went through in defending his claim as the inventor of the telephone: "After Gray, the weightiest challenger who came against Bell was Professor Amos E. Dolbear, of Tufts College. He, like Gray, had written a letter of applause to Bell in 1877.

"I congratulate you, sir," he said, "upon your very great invention, and I hope to see it supplant all forms of existing telegraphs, and that you will be successful in obtaining the wealth and honor which is your due." But one year later, Dolbear came to view with an opposition telephone. It was not an imitation of Bell's, he insisted, but an improvement upon an electrical device made by a German named Philip Reis, in 1861. Thus there appeared upon the scene the so-called "Reis telephone," which was not a telephone at all, in any practical sense, but which served well enough for nine years or more as a weapon to use against the Bell patents. Poor Philip Reis himself, the son of a baker in Frankfort, Germany, had hoped to make a telephone, but he had failed. His machine was operated by a "make-and-break" current, and so could not carry the infinitely delicate vibrations made by the human voice. It could transmit the pitch of a sound, but not the QUALITY. At its best, it could carry a tune, but never at any time a spoken sentence.

Reis, in his later years, realized that his machine could never be used for the transmission of conversation; and in a letter to a friend he tells of a code of signals that he has invented. Bell had once, during his three years of experimenting, made a Reis machine, although at that time he had not seen one. But he soon threw it aside, as of no practical value. As a teacher of acoustics, Bell knew that the one indispensable requirement of a telephone is that it shall transmit the WHOLE of a sound, and not merely the pitch of it. Such scientists as Lord Kelvin, Joseph Henry, and Edison had seen the little Reis instrument years before Bell invented the telephone; but they regarded it as a mere musical toy. It was "not in any sense a speaking telephone," said Lord Kelvin.

And Edison, when trying to put the Reis machine in the most favorable light, admitted humorously that when he used a Reis transmitter he generally "knew what was coming; and knowing what was coming, even a Reis transmitter, pure and simple, reproduces sounds which seem almost like that which was being transmitted; but when the man at the other end did not know what was coming, it was very seldom that any word was recognized." In the course of the Dolbear lawsuit, a Reis machine was brought into court, and created much amusement. It was able to squeak, but not to speak. Experts and professors wrestled with it in vain. It refused to transmit one intelligible sentence. "It CAN speak, but it WON'T," explained one of Dolbear's lawyers. It is now generally known that while a Reis machine, when clogged and out of order, would transmit a word or two in an imperfect way, it was built on wrong lines. It was no more a telephone than a wagon is a sleigh, even though it is possible to chain the wheels and make them slide for a foot or two.

Said Judge Lowell, in rendering his famous decision: "A century of Reis would never have produced a speaking telephone by mere improvement of construction. It was left for Bell to discover that the failure was due not to workmanship but to the principle which was adopted as the basis of what had to be done. . . . Bell discovered a new art--that of transmitting speech by electricity, and his claim is not as broad as his invention. . . . To follow Reis is to fail; but to follow Bell is to succeed." After the victory over Dolbear, the Bell stock went soaring skywards; and the higher it went, the greater were the number of infringers and blowers of stock bubbles. To bait the Bell Company became almost a national sport. Any sort of claimant, with any sort of wild tale of prior invention, could find a speculator to support him.

On they came, a motley array, "some in rags, some on nags, and some in velvet gowns." One of them claimed to have done wonders with an iron hoop and a file in 1867; a second had a marvelous table with glass legs; a third swore that he had made a telephone in 1860, but did not know what it was until he saw Bell's patent; and a fourth told a vivid story of having heard a bullfrog croak via a telegraph wire which was strung into a certain cellar in Racine, in 1851. This comic opera phase came to a head in the famous Drawbaugh case, which lasted for nearly four years, and filled ten thousand pages with its evidence. Having failed on Reis, the German, the opponents of Bell now brought forward an American inventor named Daniel Drawbaugh, and opened up a noisy newspaper campaign. To secure public sympathy for Drawbaugh, it was said that he had invented a complete telephone and switchboard before 1876, but was in such "utter and abject poverty" that he could not get himself a patent.

Five hundred witnesses were examined; and such a general turmoil was aroused that the Bell lawyers were compelled to take the attack seriously, and to fight back with every pound of ammunition they possessed. The fact about Drawbaugh is that he was a mechanic in a country village near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was ingenious but not inventive; and loved to display his mechanical skill before the farmers and villagers. He was a subscriber to The Scientific American; and it had become the fixed habit of his life to copy other people's inventions and exhibit them as his own. He was a trailer of inventors. More than forty instances of this imitative habit were shown at the trial, and he was severely scored by the judge, who accused him of "deliberately falsifying the facts." His ruling passion of imitation, apparently, was not diminished by the loss of his telephone claims, as he came to public view again in 1903 as a trailer of Marconi.

Drawbaugh's defeat sent the Bell stock up once more, and brought on a Xerxes' army of opposition which called itself the "Overland Company." Having learned that no one claimant could beat Bell in the courts, this company massed the losers together and came forward with a scrap-basket full of patents. Several powerful capitalists undertook to pay the expenses of this adventure. Wires were strung; stock was sold; and the enterprise looked for a time so genuine that when the Bell lawyers asked for an injunction against it, they were refused. This was as hard a blow as the Bell people received in their eleven years of litigation; and the Bell stock tumbled thirty-five points in a few days. Infringing companies sprang up like gourds in the night. And all went merrily with the promoters until the Overland Company was thrown out of court, as having no evidence, except "the refuse and dregs of former cases-the heel-taps found in the glasses at the end of the frolic." But even after this defeat for the claimants, the frolic was not wholly ended.

They next planned to get through politics what they could not get through law; they induced the Government to bring suit for the annulment of the Bell patents. It was a bold and desperate move, and enabled the promoters of paper companies to sell stock for several years longer. The whole dispute was re-opened, from Gray to Drawbaugh. Every battle was re-fought; and in the end, of course, the Government officials learned that they were being used to pull telephone chestnuts out of the fire. The case was allowed to die a natural death, and was informally dropped in 1896. In all, the Bell Company fought out thirteen lawsuits that were of national interest, and five that were carried to the Supreme Court in Washington. It fought out five hundred and eighty-seven other lawsuits of various natures; and with the exception of two trivial contract suits, IT NEVER LOST A CASE." A news story from TELECOM Digest (link was dead on Aug. 26, 2002) follows: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 12:57:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 288 Editor: Patrick A.

Townson Who is credited as inventing the telephone? Was it Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray, or Antonio Meucci? (Everyday Mysteries: Fun Science Facts from the Library of Congress) Who is credited as inventing the telephone? Was it Alexander Graham Bell, Elisha Gray, or Antonio Meucci? Alexander Graham Bell is often credited as the inventor of the telephone since he was awarded the first successful patent. However, there were many other inventors such as Elisha Gray and Antonio Meucci who also developed a talking telegraph. Attributing the true inventor or inventors to a specific invention can be tricky business. Often credit goes to the inventor of the most practical or best working invention rather than to the original inventor(s). This happens to be the case of the invention of the telephone! There is a lot of controversy and intrigue surrounding the invention of the telephone. There have been court cases, books, and articles generated about the subject. Of course, Alexander Graham Bell is the father of the telephone. After all it was his design that was first patented, however, he was not the first inventor to come up with the idea of a telephone.

Antonio Meucci, an Italian immigrant, began developing the design of a talking telegraph or telephone in 1849. In 1871, he filed a caveat (an announcement of an invention) for his design of a talking telegraph. Due to hardships, Meucci could not renew his caveat. His role in the invention of the telephone was overlooked until the United States House of Representatives passed a Resolution on June 11, 2002, honoring Meucci's contributions and work. You can read the resolution (107th Congress, H Res 269) on Congress.gov . To make matters even more interesting some researchers suggest that Elisha Gray, a professor at Oberlin College, applied for a caveat of the telephone on the same day Bell applied for his patent of the telephone- these gentlemen didnï¿½t actually visit the Patent Office, their lawyers did on their behalf. In Historical First Patents: The First United States Patent for Many Everyday Things (Scarecrow Press, 1994), Travis Brown, reports that Bellï¿½s lawyer got to the patent office first. The date was February 14, 1876.

He was the fifth entry of that day, while Grayï¿½s lawyer was 39th. Therefore, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Bell with the first patent for a telephone, US Patent Number 174,465 rather than honor Gray's caveat. However, some authors dispute this story and suggest that there was malfeasance by certain individuals at Patent Office, and possibly Bell himself. If someone asks who is credited with inventing the telephone, you can explain the controversy that still surrounds this question. Related Web Sites Alexander Graham Bell's Family Papers From the Library of Congress American Memory Web site, the collection includes "correspondence, scientific notebooks, journals, blueprints, articles, and photographs documenting Bell's invention of the telephone and his involvement in the first telephone company, his family life, his interest in the education of the deaf, and his aeronautical and other scientific research. Dates span from 1862 to 1939, but the bulk of the materials are from 1865 to 1920." Antonio Meucci A short history of Antonio Meucci from the Italian Historical Society of America.

Antionio Meucci Revisited This Web page provides details of Antonio Meucci's telephone which includes drawings. Elisha Gray This Web page from the Electronic Oberlin Group, provides a brief history of Elisha Gray along with related Web links for more information. PBS: The Telephone - PBS provides the transcript to the film "The Telephone," a gallery, people & events, and a teacher's guide. The Special Feature section also provides information about forgotten inventions such as the can opener. Further Reading Baker, Burton H. The gray matter: the forgotten story of the telephone. St. Joseph, MI, Telepress, 2000. 140 p. Grosvenor, Edwin & Morgan Wesson. Alexander Graham Bell: the life and times of the man who invented the telephone. New York, Harry Abrams, 1997. 304 p. Schiavo, Giovanni Ermenegildo. Antonio Meucci, inventor of the telephone. New York, Vigo Press, c1958. 288 p. Stwerka, Eve & Albert. Hello! Hello! A look inside the telephone. Englewood Cliffs, NJ., Messner, c1991.

40 p. (Juvenile) Hounshell, D.A. Two paths to the telephone. Scientific American, v. 244, January 1981: 156-163. For more print resources... Search on "Alexander Graham Bell," "Elisha Grey," or "Antonio Meucci" in the Library of Congress Online Catalog . Invention of The Telephone - Who Invented The Telephone - InventionReaction Invention of the Telephone Posted on August 3, 2009 by Jamie Slaughter , with 32767 views One of the most important and revolutionary inventions which impacts greatly upon modern day communication is the invention of the telephone. The idea behind the telephone is simple, a system which converts sound into a series of electrical impulses of differing frequencies, and then reverses this procedure to re-create the sound, typically a human voice. Sounds simple enough, but it took many years and an array of different inventors to finally succeed with the technology. As early as 1831, Michael Faraday proved that vibrations of metal could be converted into electrical impulses.

This was the basic principle of the telephone, but no one made use of such technology until 1861, when German inventor, Johann Reis, successfully built an apparatus that converted sound to electricity and back again. The apparatus had many flaws, incapable of transmitting many frequencies and therefore was never fully developed. This idea was elaborated on by two men in the United States, who simultaneously began experimenting and creating what would be known as the telephone. Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell (a Scottish inventor), both worked hard to produce the equipment, and amazingly both filed for a patent within hours of one another, Bell beating his rival by merely two hours on February 14th, 1876. Despite Gray building the initial diaphragm / electromagnetic receiver two years prior, he was unable to produce a working version of his transmitter until after Bell. Bell worked effortlessly, whereas Gray became disheartened by the exhausting invention process. The first comprehensible telephone conversation was said to have taken place between Bell and his assistant, who was sitting in another room. Bell said, "Come here, Watson, I want you" which Watson successfully heard via the receiver and the invention of the telephone was complete.

The Bell Telephone Company (AT&T) was soon established and grew to be the largest telephone company in existence. The following year, in 1877, the first telephone system was put in place in Hartford, Connecticut, whilst the first exchange which linked two cities, was established between both Boston and New York in 1883. London hosted the first exchange put into practice outside the United States in 1879. The system however proved time consuming, as the exchange was controlled by a large switchboard with a number of operators working manually to divert the calls. The first automatic exchange was patented by Almon Strowger in 1891 and instilled in 1892, although manual switchboards remained in place until the mid-twentieth century. In 1889, William Gray invented the coin operated telephone, whereas the first rotary dial telephone was produced by Frenchman, Antoine Barnay, in 1923. The Bell Telephone Company later developed the mobile telephone which was used by New York police cars in 1924. The first commercial mobile service was created in 1946, in St Louis, Missouri but it did not become commonplace until a following four decades.

Touch tone systems, which used sound tones rather than electrical pulses, were installed in 1941, however the need for central switching made the idea too expensive, yet Bell's company were curious as to the potential of touch tone employment. As electrical circuitry prices fell, the touch tone systems could finally be deployed in common households, which occurred in 1962. AT&T began experimentation with cells within mobile technology, primarily based on hexagonal geographical regions. As the caller moved from one cell to another, the communication link would remain intact, by automatically switching to the new cell without any form of disruption. This foundation for mobile phone technology was put into place in the United States in 1983. The invention of the telephone is a hot topic within the inventor circle, and the recognised inventor is somewhat sketchy. Many believe it to be Alexander Graham Bell, whereas others believe it to be Antonio Meucci, Philip Reis or Elisha Gray. Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone - Mar 07, 1876 - HISTORY.com This Day in History: 03/07/1876 - Alexander Graham Bell Patents the Telephone Captain James Cook discovered the Northwest coast of the Americas on this day.

He discovered what is now the coast of Oregon, and was the first European to do so. German troops violated the Treaty of Versailles on this day in 1936. Broadway musicals were put on pause for four days during the musician walkout. Also, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, or what he called the electric speech machine. Lead Story Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone Share this: Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone Author Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone URL Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his revolutionary new invention–the telephone. The Scottish-born Bell worked in London with his father, Melville Bell, who developed Visible Speech, a written system used to teach speaking to the deaf. In the 1870s, the Bells moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where the younger Bell found work as a teacher at the Pemberton Avenue School for the Deaf. He later married one of his students, Mabel Hubbard. While in Boston, Bell became very interested in the possibility of transmitting speech over wires. Samuel F.B.

Morse’s invention of the telegraph in 1843 had made nearly instantaneous communication possible between two distant points. The drawback of the telegraph, however, was that it still required hand-delivery of messages between telegraph stations and recipients, and only one message could be transmitted at a time. Bell wanted to improve on this by creating a “harmonic telegraph,” a device that combined aspects of the telegraph and record player to allow individuals to speak to each other from a distance. With the help of Thomas A. Watson, a Boston machine shop employee, Bell developed a prototype. In this first telephone, sound waves caused an electric current to vary in intensity and frequency, causing a thin, soft iron plate–called the diaphragm–to vibrate. These vibrations were transferred magnetically to another wire connected to a diaphragm in another, distant instrument. When that diaphragm vibrated, the original sound would be replicated in the ear of the receiving instrument. Three days after filing the patent, the telephone carried its first intelligible message–the famous “Mr. Watson, come here, I need you”–from Bell to his assistant.

Bell’s patent filing beat a similar claim by Elisha Gray by only two hours. Not wanting to be shut out of the communications market, Western Union Telegraph Company employed Gray and fellow inventor Thomas A. Edison to develop their own telephone technology. Bell sued, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld Bell’s patent rights. In the years to come, the Bell Company withstood repeated legal challenges to emerge as the massive American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and form the foundation of the modern telecommunications industry. Related Videos

Question: Who was the inventor of the telephone?
Answer: Alexander Graham Bell